Space Quest V: Roger Wilco in The Next Mutation

Space Quest V: Roger Wilco in The Next Mutation- released on February 5, 1993.
Space Quest V is unusual in the series in that it primarily takes aim at parodying Star Trek. Although there are plenty of references to other sci-fi movies, like Predator, Alien, and The Fly, the game never strays too far away from its primary target. In SQ5, Roger Wilco decides it’s high time to be all that he can be and enlists as a cadet in the StarCon Academy with delusions of someday commanding his own starship.

But after bumbling his way through a cadet aptitude test, Roger’s career suddenly put on the fast track thanks to a computer malfunction that promotes him to Captain of the SCS Eureka… the *suckiest* garbage scow in the fleet (basically an over-sized vacuum cleaner). Yes, no matter how hard Roger tries, there’s just no escaping his janitorial destiny.

While cadetting about the Starcon space port, Roger manages to run afoul of the notoriously narcissistic Captain Raems T. Quirk who he will butt with heads on more than one occasion during the course of this adventure. It is also at StarCon where Roger bumps into his future wife, Ambassador Beatrice Wankmeister.

When Roger finally receives his commission to command the SCS Eureka, he sets out with his new crew on a 5 year mission to explore strange gassy anomalies, to seek out drifting refuse of alien civilizations, to boldy go… well, you get the picture.

While on his intergalactic garbage runs Roger and his intrepid crew manage to uncover an illegal bio hazardous waste dumping ring with tendrils leading all the way up to some of StarCons top brass. It’s up to Roger and his intrepid crew to track down the source of the illegal dumping and root-out the culprits.

Discussion ¬

While overall I still prefer the text parser Space Quest games, I think Space Quest V was a better point & click game than Space Quest IV was, despite the absence of voice acting and narrative. As much as I like playing Roger the humble janitor, it was a nice change, playing Roger the Captain and having a crew that slowly learns to respect you and going up against your rival Captain, Captain Quirk. Sucked that after all this you get demoted to Janitor again for SQ6.